No greater love; than to lay down one's life for a friend

Menu

CTA BOARD’S PENSION GAMES

Valerie Jarrett was on the Chicago Transit Authority board for nearly eight years before becoming a top aide to President Barack Obama. Howard Medley was on the CTA board for a decade before he was convicted in a scheme involving a CTA fuel contract.

Despite their divergent paths, the time Jarrett and Medley spent there proved lucrative to both of them. They and other retired CTA board members — all of them political appointees who worked only part-time — each came away with five-figure pensions that have cost the public transit agency a total of more than $3 million over 10 years, a Better Government Association/Chicago Sun-Times investigation has found.

In 2014, the most recent year for which records were available, the CTA paid $330,000 into…